I just spent a month traveling around europe and I encountered turks where ever I went. Never did I ever feel that they could be or ever would be compatible with europeans. They were basically the equivilant to American blacks, they sit in their ghettos and often beg for money. just as the genetic maps show they are closely related to southern italians and arab greeks. many of these people from my impressions were "non-white". They would beg for your money or try to steal it, they didnt seem to have a natural sense of pride or desire to better themselves, they seemed perfectly content to leach from and damage the societies that they had infested. My point is that you can show me all the genetic maps that you want, but you are never going to convince me that we should welcome the turks into our societies. I am not saying that they are nessicarily a stupid group of people, they are just far to different from the europeans in their natural drives to ever be anything more than a burden.

I can definitely say that it wasn't practiced in Hellas since no such record of it exists.. but its interesting to note that it seems like Islam was against such actions making what that geocities cite claims highly questionable.

I would think so. I was in Greece last year and if there is one people Greeks hate it is Turks. I can't imagine mixing and this is why I thought this site was unreliable.

I saw that the ending to the name indicated "one who is from", and then the word Bhagdat drew suspicion. I have hobbies in both vexillology and numismatics {which requires a knowledge of alphabets or one becomes a very poor hobbyist} and will often originally draw a conjecture from which to begin my own research into a topic.

Well your conjecture is flawed. Cypriot surnames are quite different to standard Hellenic. (really screwed up system if you ask me) As of the last 5 decades they're based not on the father's surname but his given name , usually with the addition of an "idis" which we're (mainland Hellenes) accustomed to seeing in Pontian Hellenes. While the older system was nothing more than the adoption of the father's or grandfather's given names or even a nickname. Actually until the mid 1950's. one could find that a family of lets say 4 children, could bear an equal amount of surnames, one deriving from each grandfather's given name, one from the father's and one based on a nickname.. (of course this is simply an example and not the actual methodology)

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Looking up the Baghdatis on the net turned up the fact that his father was Lebanese. Therefore, Arabic language forms apply in locating the origins of the name, and clearly lead to Baghdad.

The problem once again is that you're basing the whole idea on the notion that Bagdatis is correct when its not, since as already explained its Pagdatis with a P. Furthermore we actually ignore the status of his surname, meaning, does he actually bear his Lebs (whom you titled a Turk) father's surname or could it be based on one of the above mentioned standard Cypriot methods of forming one?
Seeing that Pagdatis is a common surname (not as common as Papadopoulos is here, but you can find several in their online phone directory) we'd have to exclude the possibility of it being his father's since several of the surname bearers are much older than both, which means that theirs actually predates his.

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Your post is very, very concise and well thought out, and I don't mean to trounce a local hero.

Not my hero, just a good player.

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Baghdatis was the product of modern immigration.

No objection..but as already stated presenting one Cypriot immigrant doesn't support your claim of "a number of Hellenes bearing Turkish ancestry".

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I will give him the precedence; Once he’s said his piece, I'll shoot him dead with new words and thoughts. And then, if he so much as mutters, he shall be destroyed, being stung in his whole face and his two eyes by my maxims, as if by hornets.

No objection..but as already stated presenting one Cypriot immigrant doesn't support your claim of "a number of Hellenes bearing Turkish ancestry".

It is but an example of modern immigration, and in no way implies any theory concerning the general Hellene ancestry. I would propose that outside of Greece, let's say Turkey and Armenia, religion plays a greater role in group identity than the concept of race as seen in the West. Since religion may be easily adopted and morphs over time, often persons are classified based on erroneous criteria.

I never said that this was true for Greeks.

Anyhow, Baghdatis, Baghdadlian, Baghdadli names seem similar don't they. That's because his father changed his name from El Baghdadi. Fact.

I'm more than willing to admit when I'm wrong. But here I went to several websites that explained that Pagdatis' father is Lebanese, an Arab.

Who's objected to that ? (well you did by titling him a Turk but thats a different issue)

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On one Greek website it was explained that the surname El Baghdadi was changed to Pagdatis.

Well despite my efforts the only site that appears to present "El Baghdadi" and Pagdatis on the same page is this forum, so I'd really love to see how this alleged Hellenic site justifies the alleged claim. Especially since as I've already noted the Cyprus phone book has several individuals by this surname none of which are offspring of immigrants (well at least based on the lack of evidence we currently have) nor bare any apparent relation to his Leb father..

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It's possible that I came to this conclusion due to an error of transliteration, though the fact is that he is 1/2 Lebanese.

Again noone attempted to refute the fact that his father is a Leb, the whole objection is related to the amateurish approach in which an english transliteration is used in an attempt to find the origins of a Hellenic surname.

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He is a product of modern immigration to the Isle of Cypress from the mainland of Asia minor.

Of Cyprus, very well said and nothing remotely close to your original claim of numerous Hellenes being of Turkish ancestry.

A wise man british statesman William Ewart Gladstone (1809 – 1898) once said: "Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization vanished from view. They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to government by law.—Yet a government by force can not be maintained without the aid of an intellectual element.— Hence there grew up, what has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine." God please help us!